best text size?

I've owned my site for a decade so it's hard for me to determine if the text size has been way too small the whole time.

Do you think the text size is actually too small for a webpage or ok?

 

Maybe increase for 1px or 2px. I like Digitapoint font size. It is 11pt.

 

the clarity of the font depends on the screen size. for a 1920x1080 monitor use 14px font size. Now your font size looks very small in my screen.

 

I'd bring the font size up a little, but you should also consider one other factor as you make your decision.
What is the average age of your site visitors? If it is creeping over 40, go a little larger...please..

 

I think it's a little too small. You can increase it a bit for a better readability. Also, you can increase the line height.

 

How's this?

 

Looks better for me, but I continue to believe that you should also increase a bit the line height to be a little more space between rows.

 

Increasing font size will only go well if you increase line height. For arial font, i use 14px font-size and line-height: 20-22px depending upon the design.

 

The best basic font size is whatever the user has set for his browser. If he needs a large font due to eyesight issues, let him have it. If he prefers a little smaller font let him have it. The way you do that is set body {font-size: 100%;}. Then use em or % font sizes for elements that differ from the base size.

cheers,

gary

 

For Arial, you have to did 14px font size

 

You should go for 12 to 14px font size it is readable and not too big for the readers.

 

Don't you feel setting it according to the Screen Size along with EM (%) is better.

I find the following article interesting:

http://blog.cloudfour.com/the-ems-have-it-proportional-media-queries-ftw/

 

I think @kk5st said it best. Let the user have control of the font size and then you don't need to worry about it. I will never understand how a web developer has an ego big enough to think it is okay to shove font size and font onto a user. It is just plain stupid to think any font size is going to be suitable for all users. If you have a design that cannot allow flexibility in font size, then the design is crap.

 

i think it is small.

 

A certain trend among designers, believing that small text gives a Web page a sleek appearance and provides more space per "page" for actual content, sometimes results in the use of unreasonably small font sizes.
Unfortunately, this does not go well with the diversity of platforms used to access Web pages, from portable devices with tiny screens to projection devices hooked to computers. And even within a specific platform, text settings may vary.

 

the best practice for sizing fonts is em. because it is not related to users client resolution. but I use pixels in my own applications. because I want to render smaller fonts in higher resolutions. but percent is not recommended for font size at all. I normally use 11px.
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The diversity of the responses supports my implied assertion that there is no such thing as a "correct", "best", or even "optimal" text size. Anyone who insist that font size must be set is a fool who is losing traffic and the respect of users.

 

1) How are you declaring the font? In pixels? Well then it's rubbish as it's not auto-scaling to the users preferences. In pt? Well that's great if you're designing to print but has no place on a SCREEN target. In EM? Good man.

2) really depends on the font-face. Serif fonts usually need to be 20 to 25% larger than their Sans counterparts so there's enough pixels to render their glyphs -- a constant problem on screen and where the mantra "serif is for print, sans is for screen" came from. Retina and other high dpi displays are starting to make a dent, but given how crappy 4k displays are from a usability standpoint due to crappy OS support for larger fonts is working against that.

A good 'rule of thumb' is that anything smaller than 75% the default font size in a sans-face has legibility issues, with 85% being more ideal; for serif fonts you want 100% of the default (1EM)...

There's a reason 99% of my websites have this on BODY:
font:normal 85%/150% arial,helvetica,sans-serif;

It gives 14px to vga/normal/100%/96dpi/win7small/whateverTheyWantToCallItThisYear and 17px to 8514/large/125%/120dpi/win7large/whateverTheyWantToCallItThisYear users like myself... also works out to 20px on my media center rig. (150% / X-Large)...

... and remember EM's inherit, so if you say 85% after you've said 85% on a parent, you'll get 72.25% of the original value.

Basically if you use % or EM's users who need larger fonts will get them automatically as they'll have set the computer up to deliver them. That's the entire concept of elastic design, and part of why I say layouts should be semi-fluid, elastic AND responsive. If you don't have all three, and have a crappy fixed width, crappy fixed metric fonts, and no adjusting to the available screen space then your site is rubbish.

Without seeing the actual site in question, it's hard to weigh in more.

 

I personally prefer the smaller font, but it's true that it might be hard to read for the regular user ...

 

See, I suck at coding. This is my problem. lol
Anyway, my stylesheet is a slew of pixels and NOT %. I'll show you all.

html, body {
    height: 100%;
    padding: 0;
    margin: 0;
}

body {
    background: url("REMOVED") no-repeat 50% top #2f2f2f;
    font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
    font-size: 12px;
    color: #d0d0d0;
}

.block {    background-color: #1b1b1b;
    padding: 12px;
    margin-bottom: 12px;
    font-size: 13px;
}

Code (CSS):

How can I go about switching to something more efficient?